Rivas, Nicagagua
It´s election time here in Nicaragua. Since 1990, when US-financed candidate Violetta Chamorro defeated Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega at the polls, the right wing Liberal Constitutional Party (PLC) has kept a strangehold on the presidency. They are threatened by a resurgence of support for Sandinismo and the comeback attempt of Ortega. Though Ortega is tarnished by a series of scandals, he remains a rock star among the masses. He is the only figure on Nicaragua´s political scene with enough clout to, for instance, call a transit strike with less than a day´s notice that will grind Managuan traffic to a halt.
The Nicaraguan right, meanwhile, is split by a rivalry between presidential frontrunner and PLC defector Eduardo Montealegre and former Vice-President Jose Rizo. The Bush administration has thrown its weight behind Montealegre, mainly because Rizo is campaigning as a surrogate for former President Arnaldo Aleman, a corrupt oligarch serving a 20 year sentence for looting the treasury. If Rizo wins, Aleman will undoubtedly be pardoned. Rizo is furious with the Bush administration, and has repeatedly accused them of promoting divisions on the right. Certainly Washington´s support for one right-wing candidate at the expense of another doesn´t hurt Ortega and the Sandinistas.
As in the US, gas prices are a huge election issue here. In Rivas, where I am staying, a gallon of regular costs nearly four dollars. Bus fare was just raised in Managua, ingiting already simmering public outrage. Public transportation unions have already mounted a series of strikes this year to protest the price hikes. More are inevitable.
Enter Hugo Chavez. This week, a group of high-level Venezuelan oil technicians traveled to Managua to meet with Sandinista officials, including the mayor of Managua, to discuss forming a joint Nicaraguan-Venezuelan oil company to compete directly with US bigs like Shell and Texaco. In the near term, Chavez has vowed to supply Sandinista-governed cities with petroleum at favorable rates. In the long term, he promises to lower prices even further if Ortega is elected.
A Nicaraguan federal government willing to work with Chavez (the current Bolanos administration refuses Venezuelan oil at the behest of its American puppeteers) will ease the flow of Venezuelan petroleum on to the national market. With Nicaraguans keenly aware that Venezuelan influence on their government will help them at the pump, the Liberal Party´s demagogic red-baiting of Ortega and Chavez is increasingly falling on deaf ears. Whether or not Ortega wins, the oil-men of the Bush adminstration have no one to blame but themselves for strengthening Chavez´s hand in Central America.
The White House´s bungling has not been limited to Nicaragua. It has even managed to alienate its greatest ally in the region, outgoing Costa Rican President Abel Pacheco. Pacheco is a basically right-of-center, pro-American politician who rammed CAFTA through his National Assembly and backed Bush on the so-called war on terror at great cost to his popularity ratings. Yet after Costa Rica was battered last year by hurricane after hurricane, and Pacheco asked Bush to help rebuild four key bridges, Bush refused. Pacheco´s sin? Costa Rica supported the Inter-American Human Rights Court.
¨I don´t know why they punish me, such a friend of theirs,¨ Pacheco told the Tico Times, a non-partisan English daily, referring to the Bush administration. ¨They treat me like a dog. They left me without an ambassador for two years.¨ Now, even the US´s historical puppet in Latin America, Costa Rica, could drift away from the Washington Consensus.
To be sure, the White House´s version of the US´s historically predatory Central American policy is not entirely motivated by ideological pettiness. There is, as always, an element of sheer incompetence involved as well. Case in point: Bush´s ambassador to Nicagua, Paul Trivelli, has managed in the process of alienating his allies to become a national laughingstock. In an attempt to repudiate Jose Rizo´s denial that he is a surrogate of Aleman, Trevelli declared, ¨We have a saying in English. If it walks like a duck, and it talks like a duck, then it´s probably a duck.¨
In Nicaragua, the word for duck is also used as derogatory slang for homosexual.